US AUTO INDUSTRY, LABOR JOIN PRESIDENT, VICE PRESIDENT
TO GIVE ONE-YEAR PROGRESS REPORT ON HISTORIC
PARTNERSHIP FOR NEW GENERATION OF VEHICLES
Government, Industry, Labor Craft Plan to Create
Super Fuel-Efficient Car
WASHINGTON -- One year after announcing an historic new partnership

aimed at strengthening U.S. competitiveness by developing technologies
for a new generation of vehicles, President Bill Clinton and Vice
President Al Gore today (10/18) joined with the United Auto Workers
(UAW) and the Big Three American automobile makers to mark the event and
outline their plan for creating a vehicle up to three times more fuel
efficient than today's.

"In less than one year, we have moved from announcing this historic
partnership to creating a plan that will make it a reality," President
Clinton said. "America is going to build this car. I'm proud that the
efforts of creative people throughout American industry have been able
to move so quickly to design a project every bit as ambitious and
complex as the Apollo mission."

Vice President Gore said, "We are here today to reaffirm our
commitment to a program that is critical to both maintaining jobs in a
vital U.S. industry and protecting the environment. Unprecedented
cooperation among government agencies, industry and labor has led to an
ambitious technical plan and an effective management team for ensuring
that it is implemented. We've come a long way in a year, and it's clear
that if we're going to meet our goal in a decade, we've got a lot of
work ahead of us."

President Clinton and Vice President Gore joined last year to
launch the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles (PNGV), which
aims to increase U.S. competitiveness in manufacturing, ensure the
preeminence of the U.S. automobile industry, and develop an attractive,
affordable automobile that will meet or beat all urban pollution and
safety standards while achieving three times the fuel efficiency of
today's comparable vehicles. Today the partners returned to describe
the first year's progress, including development of a program plan, a
management team to implement it, and technical work already underway.

Once the PNGV was announced last year, an unprecedented
industry/government engineering team, which worked together to craft a
detailed plan for achieving the program goals, was quickly created. The
team's plan identifies the technologies needed to achieve the cost and
performance goals of the project, a strategy ensuring that all promising
approaches are supported in the early stages of the project. It also
establishes a time line and a disciplined process for evaluating and
selecting the most promising technologies for further support.

A process for peer review also has been established to provide for
outside expertise to advise on the propriety of the technical plan.
The National Academy of Engineering has begun this review, already
conducted an in-depth assessment and is expected to issue its first
report later this year.

In addition, during the past year, federal agencies and the
industry have made major funding decisions based on the technology
plan. For example, more than $250 million of the federal government's
budget will have directly supported PNGV projects over the past year.
Two-thirds of the funding has come from the Department of Energy with
the rest from the Departments of Defense, Commerce, and Transportation,
as well as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the
Environmental Protection Agency. The industry has jointly funded these
projects with the cost of many of the projects supported equally by
government and industry.

Finally, the federal agencies also are completing an unprecedented
interagency plan for next year's funding:

major DOE and DOD contracts for hybrid vehicles and

key components (electric motors, power electronics);

CRADAs (Cooperative Research and Development Agreements)
from the Advanced Technology Program in NIST, DOE, and
other agencies to develop the high-performance, low-cost
materials needed (including light metals, advanced
metals, composites, engineering plastics, ceramics, steel
and cast iron, life cycle assessment of materials);

an expanded DOE program to support fuel cells involving all
three major U.S. auto makers and a large number of suppliers;

NASA and other agency support for development and use of
advanced design tools and simulations of vehicle concepts;

development of a major program for high-power energy storage
devices such as high-power batteries, ultra-capacitors, and
flywheels;

programs to reduce NOx and other emissions that
contribute to urban pollution
programs to reduce air resistance, tire resistance, and
mechanical losses due to internal friction;
NSF, NIST, and other agency support for rapid prototyping
technologies, agile manufacturing, high- performance
computing and advanced manufacturing techniques.
Steven Yokich, vice president, international union, UAW, said,

"The partnership offers the promise of strengthening a key U.S.
industry by assisting in the development of cutting-edge technology.
That's important because if we can maintain U.S. leadership in this
vital industry -- the UAW believes we can maintain our industrial base
and protect thousands of good-paying jobs for American workers."

Bill Hoagland, executive vice president of General Motors Corp.,
said, "This partnership will help make all American industry more
competitive. It will help to produce a stronger economy, a cleaner
environment, and more competitive businesses, and technical leadership
in critical fields."

Thomas Denomme, vice chairman and chief administrative officer of
Chrysler Corp., said, "When we gathered here a year ago, we knew that
Super Car was going to be a huge technical challenge. Developing a
class of vehicles that achieve quantum gains in fuel economy, retain all
the function, affordability and utility of family cars, and that are
benign to the environment is no small feat."

Alex Trotman, chairman and chief executive officer of Ford Motor
Co., said, "The challenges faced by the partnership are great. But if
anyone can do the job, it's American scientists, engineers, the
national labs, and private industry -- working together."